And to everyone else in general
By Tania Arora, Staff Writer
Last week I had a chance to interview a Digital Marketing and Public Relations (PR) specialist who is also the co-founder of one of the top Marketing and PR agencies in British Columbia. During the interview, he mentioned so many relevant sets of learning skills that one must ensure they acquire to be at par before they step into professional shoes.
I have always been a believer that education isn’t theoretical or classroom-based. A textbook might build the base and guide us to a good path, but other experiences that we gather along the way with our learning are just as, if not more valuable.
Skills aren’t just hard skills our instructors teach us, they include soft skills which might range from how we walk, talk, shake hands, handle pressure, stay calm, keep smiling in the toughest of all situations, say “no” to people, and so on. If we consider stepping out into the corporate sector, technical skills are an additional requirement which during the entire course of education, we tend to ignore.
If you are an aspiring business or marketing graduate, let me tell you, your employee won’t be interested in knowing how many courses you have done or what your rank in college was. And I don’t mean that we must not work hard to get a good GPA or a rank in school, but think about it, what makes you exceptional apart from knowing the fact that everyone else is doing and learning the same thing? The learning was no different, but we can do something additional.
Be it any industry that we intend to enter as aspiring graduates, even if our university or college doesn’t provide us with any other industry-based certification or personality development lessons, we must work towards achieving it.
For marketing students, the industry-standard certificates could be Facebook Blueprint 310–101, Search Advertising, SEMRush SEO Toolkit, Google Analytics, or Adwords Fundamentals. Learning how to write listicles and advertisements will help in the long run. There are also company-specific certifications which include Amazon marketing certificate or Hubspot certificate. The experiences that we take must be different from the usual internships or volunteering program which demonstrates the actual learning or skill set that is required as a specialist.
The list might be industry-specific and could go on and on. But this mantra is for everyone, if you want to succeed and be distinct in what you do, then you must do something distinct now.
